80 points to toss-up - Birthday game event update

It’s Sunday and I just got back from Easter lunch. As I vegetate here watching enchanted with my daughter, I wanted to update the Guild at Board Game Geek with some images, only to see the site is down. So instead I will add a flavor image here until I can upload the rest, and tell you the results of the tournament.

Thing stayed very close throughout, and as I had hoped even those who did not do great in every game were still in the running all the way through.

Game 1 was two tables, one playing China, the other playing Betrayal at House on the Hill. Tim M and Jim got first place on those.

Game 2 was also 2 tables with a double helping of Game of Thrones, both 4 and 5 player flavors. Here 2 Myers boys game out on top with Tim and Andrew taking first place in each.

Game 3 was Nexus And Starfarers of Catan. Finally the Tim Myers winning streak was Broken as Dave took Starfarers on the last turn, and Andy took Nexus Ops.

Finally Game 4, almost 12 hours of gaming, and it all come down to Age of Empires III and Coliseum. James and Dave took respective victories in each game, and as a result also tied for first place. Zack and Tim tied for third place. So in a major upset, James and Dave took it to a game of toss-up, and Dave came out on top stealing first place.

Tim and Zack played out another game of toss-up with Zack taking 3rd place.
All in all it was a great Birthday and a great set of games. I plan to add more soon, but for now enjoy the image of our second place winner.

I "Clean" Robot

So I found a great deal on a new Roomba 500 series. For those who do not know what a Roomba is, it is a robot cleaning system, like a smart vacuum.

It cleans a room using some algorithm to determine the best possible coverage, and adapts to each room for furniture, size, etc… All in all it is very cool and work very well.

The only issue is what to name the little dude. James has one called Rosie, like the Jetsons. I toyed around with a few names like Roy (For Bladerunner) and Sonny from I robot, but they just did not seem to fit the awesome power of this self sufficient cleaning intelligence.

Finally a name worthy of this cleaning cybord came to me. So I am happy to introduce to you all….

Optimus Clean!

Stay away from Gamespot - since Honesty is out and Bias is in!

We have all heard about how may news organizations push certain agendas or stories usually as the result of pressure from their parent companies. The days of honest unbiased reporting seem to be dead.

I guess then it should come as no surprise a story I came across earlier today about Gamespot.com.

For years I went to Gamespot to get reviews on games. Their staff seemed to give the best unbiased reviews of games and covered everything from game play and graphics, to story and experience. They compared new games to similar genres to give a complete picture of what to expect. Mostly they were honest. When they felt a game was not up to par, they said so, giving sometimes brutal reviews, but always backing up their score with fact they experienced in the games.

That is until one reviewer gave a less than savory review of a game, and was fired a week later. Of course the parent company says the review had nothing to do with it. However it was then leaked the parent company CNET, which owns Gamespot.com spent tons of money on an advertising campaign for the game, just to have Gamestop tear it a new a-hole.

What has added to the “fact” that they incidents were related is that within the past 2 months 4 more of the senior reviewers, long appreciated for honest reviews, have left Gamespot.

Last week in an interview one said flat out that they were approached about their reviews and told that certain games should warrant higher scores. Amazingly these are the games being advertised by CNET and it’s children companies…

But the firing was unrelated, yeah right!

Well I am sorry to say I can no longer go the website for new game reviews, knowing the new review staff are mere puppets giving higher then average scores to mediocre games. This really sucks since there are very few robust review sites that are not also game manufacturer or retail sites, which you know leads to skewed reviews.

I guess the all mighty dollar agenda wins again.

On a side note, the advertisements must have worked as the game, Kane and Lynch sold over 1 million copies since December, and yet the user forums and player reviews all gave the game “HALF” the score as what Gamespot did with an average score of 3 out of 10. Too bad we had to lose a great site just so another crappy game could sell a million copies and lead to a probably just as crappy sequal.

Don't make any plans with me in November

http://www.gamespot.com/video/938611/6186370/gears-of-war-2-official-trailer-1

Army of Two delivers

Army of Two is a game I saw an advertisement for on TV just a few weeks ago. Like my children do when they see Barbie or Tinkerbell toys, my eyes went wide, and I said to my wife… “I want that”

Good thing is my birthday is coming up, so I preordered it and it arrived just yesterday…

Now I have not been able to play more then a few minutes, and that was mostly the training missions, but I got to say. This game rocks!

I have long been a fan of First Person Shooters going back to when I discovered Halo, and I also love FPS games that feature co-op (also due to Halo)

So here we have a game designed to be a first class shooter and have CO-OP be a central part of the game. In fact, if you do not play as a team, and coordinate your two players well, you are toast.

So let talk about the game itself. I will give my impression from 1-5, 5 being great and so on.

Graphics: 4.5
Truly great graphics, just slightly less on par then Gears of War, but makes Halo 3 look pong.

Controls: 3.5
Not as tight and easy as Halo or Gears, but functional. It may also just be me needing more time to get used to them.

Sound: 4.0
Great effects, cool in game audio and speech.

Game Play 5.0
So this is where the game shines for me. There is so much to say about the way they designed the combat system. So I will summarize.

• Enemies are smart, taking cover, flanking, and trying to drive you out. Makes the game hard but immersive.
• 
  You really do count on your partner. For example if you die, you actually get knocked down and cannot move. Your partner has to come heal you, but if you are under fire, he needs to drag you by the neck of your armor to cover. He cannot do this and shoot, so you have to lay down cover fire while he pulls you to safety.
• 
  Aggro is pretty cool. So Aggro simply means, the more you shoot at the bad guys, the more they focus on you. This is a central and critical part of the game since sometimes the only way to get around and flank an enemy is have your partner draw fire and put his ass on the line. Don’t waste time though, these guys are pretty smart.
• 
  Good story so far… so you are two army guys who decide to go work in the private sector. And you are called up following Sept 11th, to kick some Al Quida ass.
• 
  Grenades work well – just like Gears you can see where it is going, not just blind throw.
• 
  Good weapons – you may not start with them, in fact you have to buy them as you earn money from missions from your “suppliers”
• 
  Cool features like dual sniping allows you to take out multiple targets at the same time coordinated. Also Back to back fighting when the guys get you surrounded done in slow motion.
• 
  Cool fracking armor, those mask just make you want to kill something.
  
  Anyway, I hope to play with a friend soon, since half the fun is playing with an actual partner. The Partner AI is pretty solid, but I prefer to yell at a real person.

Going all HULK

So today on Board Game Geek I found a cool post about Space Hulk the video game. It’s a homemade version from some group of folks but it was getting good buzz.

Problem was the post was old and more so the site was closed. Seems that they overdid their bandwidth and also got the notorious Cease and Desist from Games Workshop.

Good news though. Someone at the BGG found a mirror and I was able to get my hands on it. I am happy to share but not online since my own bandwidth is almost as max.

Good parts of it:
Nice small and simple Space Hulk game.
Good sound, reminds me of Starcraft.
Simple mechanics and method to track AP points.
Full squads and maps and a great training missions to get you comfy.

The Not so good:
They left out move and shoot.
The flamer only hits 3x3 areas or single rows of 3, not whole sections.

Still to have a simple Space Hulk game like this is great.

I just hope it does not drive down the price of those German Print Imports I am getting.

$75.00 for solitaire?!

So I am reading reviews of games seeing what is next on my WANT LIST.

I come across a post about good submarine games. I am a big fan of submarines, submarine movies, etc… so I thought I should check this out.

Many of the posts talked about a game called Silent War, a game set during the WWII naval campaign against Japan. COOL!

Then I read it is a solitaire game. OK, that’s no big deal. I much prefer group type games since I run a monthly game day, but having a cool solitaire game I can play between game days would be cool.

So I go to some online retailers and WHOA… The game is $75.00. I rad the parst list and it all chits and cardboard. Evn the box is pretty small, about 12x12, 2 inches deep.

Now I admit I have never played the game or scene all the parts, but at first glance it seems really overprices for a Solitaire type of game. For $75.00 you are talking about getting Twilight Imperium, StarCraft, Battlelore, etc… large box games with solid rules and tons of parts.

It may be a great game, but seriously, $75.00 for a game I play by myself. I know I might get heat for this, but for 50-60 I can get some pretty kick ass video games that require no setup time (one review said it took 1-2 hours just to setup some of the campaigns, and they took the whole table.) and get me in the action right away.

Anyway, maybe I can find someone who has it before I even think of dropping that much green on a single player game.

AgoT is not AOEIII

Last week I officially re-entered the world of board games after a long hiatus. I have actually played a few times between the Holidays and now, but due to illness my game was way off until now.

A small group of us decided to have an impromptu get together to play A Game of Thrones, although I thought it was Age of Empires III due to an Acronym mix-up.

We planned to just play a single game and call it a night, but the game went much faster then we thought and I won so I was certainly in the mood to keep playing. Having been sick for weeks, it was nice to finally feel like my mind was sharp again and I could actually focus on playing, not just going through the motions and getting the lowest score.

So we played 2 more games. Nexus Ops and Vegas Showdown. A nice Avalon Hill mix-up. I had never played Vegas Showdown, but it came to me quickly and pulled out another victory. I played Nexus Ops well, but my strategy had a fatal flaw which left me behind on points toward the end when James pulled off a strong finish.

Regardless, it was one of the most enjoyable times I had had gaming in a long time and really infused me with the energy and excitement to keep playing.

Not that there was really any doubt I would give it up, but it helps.

SGW suffers mono

I have been away from some time due to getting Mono after the Holidays not to mentions some major stuff at my work that took way too much time. Anyway, I am back now so keep an eye out for new posts.